Category Archives: fun

An unknown skier, above, exhilarates in the joy of skiing.

Many sports occasionally provide moments that are so intense. so exciting, so exhilarating, yet so joyful that you wish they could go on forever. We have one of those moments here on film.

Cody Townsend, renowned professional skier extraordinaire, takes us along with him on one of those exhilarating moments so exciting that it makes us want to go skiing right now, even if we don’t know how to ski.

Cody skis through a tight mountain pass that narrows so dramatically that it reaches a confining width of just six feet at its slimmest point. Yet Cody whips past that thin point at speeds of 60-80 miles per hour.

Sound exciting? Enough talk. Let’s watch:

For an avid or a professional skier, perhaps this moment is what heaven is, a moment so thrilling that it continues on and on…forever into infinity.

This video was produced in conjunction with Red Bull and MSP films to promote a new ski film. You can learn more at skimovie.com.

This is the Fun Theory video in which Volkswagen changed a simple flight of stairs into a flight of stairs made up of a piano keyboard with each step becoming one key on the keyboard.

What was once a mere stairway is now a piano that can be played by stepping on keys. The change was accomplished overnight by a work crew on steps leading to and from the Odenplan subway in Stockholm, Sweden. Applying pressure on each step results in playing a musical note.

Suddenly climbing the stairs is no longer drudgery. Now it is fun.

The folks at Volkswagen postulated that one can change human behavior by making a dreary experience into one that is fun. They clearly succeeded tremendously getting a 66% increase in the use of the stairs as opposed to the escalator.

Watch for yourself:

Julie Andrews accomplished the same thing in the film, The Sound of Music, when she taught the children that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down “in a most delightful way.”

Resident Rednecks of Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, recently sported their own version of cash for clunkers when they decided to forgo collecting any government cash for their old clunker of a vehicle as they might by participating in the federal government’s cash for clunkers program.

Instead they started their own affair in which they crash their clunkers. No they do not receive $4,500 from the federal government, but, as you may surmise from the photo above, the Crash Your Clunker event was a whole lot more fun than any government subsidy or rebate.

What our Turtle Lake rednecks did was set up a weekend happening down in a gravel pit in Turtle Lake in which the clunkers were launched up a gravel ramp and sent hurtling into oblivion on the flip side of the ramp.

“It’s a little redneck, but we love it, we accept it, we admit and we enjoy it,” said Brett Moravitz, who is a self-proclaimed redneck.

Approximately 300 participants and onlookers gathered one recent Saturday afternoon at Moravitz Excavating to watch the clunkers hurtle down a runway, launch into the air and finally crash into a gravel pit.

It certainly is nowhere near as classy as NASCAR, and it demolishes the clunkers much more than a demolition derby. The Crash your Clunker event is the brainchild of Bob Moravitz.

“You don’t get to do this kind-of stuff very often,” said Bob. “I mean, destruction of a car that really isn’t worth nothing anyway. So let’s just wreck it.”

Bob’s son Rick and his pal Jake fitted the cars with remote-controlled devices so they could control the gas pedal and the steering. Since they didn’t install any remote control on the brakes, they dug trenches along the sides of the runway to prevent the cars from veering too far off course.

Upon releasing the brake, the clunkers would speed down the runway with Rick and Jake following close behind on a four-wheeler. At the same time they controlled the speed and direction of the vehicle right up to when it launched itself off the ramp.

In addition to launching cars, they also launched a camper towing a boat and a pickup pulling a round baler. But the piece de resistance was the launching of two school buses.

It seems that the Crash Your Clunker event promises to become an annual redneck phenomenon each summer in Turtle Lake that may just grow a little each succeeding year.

Unfortunately, the video sponsor no longer has the vid available. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and I just hate when they do that.

The Internet is changing constantly, which is one reason we find it fascinating. We thought we would try something different here at McCafferty’s Pub, so today for the first time we have added Indy car racing to my site.

The object is very simple: try to cross the finish line in a fast time. Since this is our first foray into Internet games, we have started with a simple racing game. Click on the directions, and then click play. It cannot get much simpler than that.

Indy Racer:

The problem with games is that they are addictive, so you want to play more and more. Make sure you do not get carried away and spend too much of your day here.